as i pass a couple headed in the opposite direction, the man asks the woman if they should take the moonie. i cringe inside, as if someone had just dragged their fingernails across a chalkboard while scraping a dinner plate with a fork. they were referring the the muni, or more precisely, killing it. it's "mu" like "municipal," not "moo" like moo-cows. they had to have been from out of town, because any locals calling the muni the "moonie" should be punched in the face immediately. with rings on. harsh, i know, but i'm also certain that i have the full support of my local san francisco brethren and sistren.
from downtown, i take the muni back to fogside, passing gentrification, blight, more gentrification, and more blight... in that order. the san franciscans seem to come together in such a way that blighted streets with boarded-up storefronts, victorian-styled-movie-theatre-turned-adult-theaters, porn palaces, check cashers, grimy bodegas, and faux 99-cent random-crap-stores can lie just yards from tourist hot spots, city hall, upper-middle-class neighborhoods, the neighborhood church, or local dog park. the homeless take cover in bus shelters, hunker down in doorways, sprawl out on sidewalks, chill on stairways, and construct cardboard and shopping cart forts in sidestreets just steps from lawyery business types, yuppie hipsters, queer bar-hoppers, and chinese grandmas. somehow, people coexist, and save for the occasional gang shooting for pride in a war over reasons long forgotten, san franciscans are a cohesive.
the true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.
: wilde.
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